He starred in Peep Show, Green Wing and Wonka – and his first novel won an award. Now the star is making operas with 64 homeless people. Not bad going for someone who was written off by his teachersPaterson Joseph is, by his own admission, an unlikely opera librettist. He had turned 50 by the time he got round to going to one, and only went because he was in it, as the “crazy” voice of God in Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. “It’s not my world,” says the actor. But therein lies part of his mission: as a black Londoner written off by the school system, his life was transformed by the goldmine he discovered while truanting down at his local library.One of his discoveries, as “a melancholy teen”, was Pushkin’s verse novel Eugene Onegin. “I remember getting it out of the library,” he says, “just because it was a small book. And I started reading this poem out loud, at night in my bedroom. And I laughed – but I was also frightened and frustrated, weeping at the tragedy of it. When I closed the book, it was dawn.” Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2024-05-27 04:00:13 UTC ]
BRAISED PORK, the debut novel by An Yu, opens with an ending. A young wife walks into the bathroom to ask which accessory her husband prefers and finds him sprawled ungracefully in the tub, drowned. Next to his body is a strange drawing: a fish with the head of a man, or a man with […] The post... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books
[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-04-21 17:00:17 UTC ]
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Recently, I threw out the first 60 pages of the novel I am currently working on. I had been determined to challenge myself by writing in the third person—I had spent the last ten years working on my first novel in the first person and I thought I was ready for something new and difficult. […] Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-04-21 08:48:34 UTC ]
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I read Jessi Jezewska Stevens’ debut novel The Exhibition of Persephone Q in a single sitting on the Sunday afternoon before the quarantine. I was magnetized not just by a great story, but one that felt uncannily timely. The novel is set in the days after 9/11, a period when America was... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-04-17 08:48:14 UTC ]
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T Kira Mahealani Madden is the author of the memoir Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls. She is still an amateur magician. Rowan Hisayo Buchanan is the author of Harmless Like You—the winner of The Authors’ Club First Novel Award and a Betty Trask Award. Her short work has appeared in... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2020-04-16 08:48:38 UTC ]
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Owen Nicholls’ debut novel is chock-full of movie references, but he delves deeply into the intricacies of maintaining a relationship. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2020-04-15 22:39:46 UTC ]
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Owen Nicholls’ debut novel is chock-full of movie references, but he delves deeply into the intricacies of maintaining a relationship. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2020-04-15 22:39:46 UTC ]
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Owen Nicholls’ debut novel is chock-full of movie references, but he delves deeply into the intricacies of maintaining a relationship. Continue reading at The Christian Science Monitor
[ The Christian Science Monitor | 2020-04-15 22:39:46 UTC ]
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Set in alternate Tudor England, “Sin Eater” by Megan Campisi is a riveting tale of female empowerment. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-04-15 06:00:00 UTC ]
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Check out the cover for E. Lily Yu's debut novel of magic and migration, ON FRAGILE WAVES. Continue reading at Book Riot
[ Book Riot | 2020-04-14 10:35:08 UTC ]
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In this debut novel by the Chinese author An Yu, male characters propel the heroine into a journey of self-discovery. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-04-14 09:00:21 UTC ]
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‘There was something Shakespearean about imperious men going down on you: the mighty have fallen.’ An extract from Naoise Dolan’s debut novel Exciting Times. The post Exciting Times appeared first on Granta. Continue reading at Granta
[ Granta | 2020-04-14 08:55:03 UTC ]
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“How Much of These Hills Is Gold,” by C Pam Zhang, reimagines the region’s past as a Chinese-American tale. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-04-07 09:00:07 UTC ]
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At once subversive and searching, the debut novel focuses on two sisters on the run whose roots lie in an unnamed country “from beyond the ocean.” Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-04-06 20:54:23 UTC ]
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The first novel to be published by Stormzy’s new imprint #Merky Books, That Reminds Me by poet and podcaster Derek Owusu, has been longlisted for the £10,000 Desmond Elliott Prize for debuts. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2020-04-06 14:35:00 UTC ]
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Chelsea Bieker's 'Godshot,' a surreal debut novel set in the parched Central Valley, depicts a fundamentalist rain cult and sex worker resisters. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2020-04-06 14:30:59 UTC ]
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Julia Alvarez's "Afterlife" is her first novel for adults in 15 years. She talks about loss, fragmentation and "American Dirt." Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2020-04-02 22:24:09 UTC ]
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Kawai Strong Washburn’s debut novel envisions an archipelago of Indigenous peoples who refuse to be erased. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-03-31 12:43:39 UTC ]
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The debut novel intersperses the story of a tech reporter in Silicon Valley with Facebook posts, tweets, Google results and other fragments. Continue reading at The Washington Post
[ The Washington Post | 2020-03-27 13:00:00 UTC ]
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In Megan Giddings’s debut novel Lakewood, desperation leads to a loss of self in a capitalist medical system bent on taking advantage of Black people and their bodies. After the death of her grandmother, Lena, a college student struggling with overwhelming medical debt and taking care of her... Continue reading at Electric Literature
[ Electric Literature | 2020-03-24 11:00:00 UTC ]
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“Then the Fish Swallowed Him,” the first novel in English by the Iranian-born Amir Ahmadi Arian, makes for unnerving reading. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2020-03-24 09:00:00 UTC ]
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